MANCHESTER, Tenn. — U.S. Attorney Bill Killian was greeted with shouts of “traitor,” “serpent,” and calls to “resign” or “go home” Tuesday night at an event aimed at improving relations between local residents and their Muslim neighbors. Killian and Kenneth Moore, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Knoxville office, were featured speakers before a hostile crowd of well over 300 at the “Public Disclosure in a Diverse Society” event at the Manchester-Coffee County Conference Center.
There’s nothing quite like a cadre of Jesus-loving, God-fearing, Muslim-hating, righteous White Patriots to make you understand the power of ignorance and hatred. And few do ignorance and hatred better than the fine, upstanding Christian White Folks in Tennessee, who live in mortal terror of creeping Sharia, halal meat, and Muslim prayer rugs. Evidently lacking the self-awareness to recognize that their unhinged, frothing-at-the-mouth hatred of any and all things Muslim portrays them as a collective exercise in self-parody (or performance art), the Angry White Folks in Manchester were in fine form.
I try (often with varying degrees of success) to refrain from using words like “stupid,” “ignorant,” or “foolish,” but try as I might, I can’t find another way to describe the racist zealots who attended this meeting. Evidently, to their way of thinking, freedom of religion and speech covers their insults directed at Islam and Muslims…but it doesn’t extend to Muslims. You’ll have to correct me if I miss the mark here, but I don’t recall language in the Bill of Rights that limited its applicability to only Conservative White Christians.
Rather than try to find ways to live together and ways to teach their children not to hate, these cretins have demonstrated once again that free speech can be- and far too often is- ignorant, hateful, and offensive speech. I don’t want to take away their right to make jackasses of themselves, because sometimes I can really use a good laugh. Even so, it’s sad that, almost 12 years after 9.11, the words “Muslim” or “Islam” are to the good, God-fearing folks of Tennessee the equivalent of waving a red cape in front of a bull. Why think when you can react? And it’s probably true that there’s nothing quite like a good Two-minute Hate to make Christian White Folks feel better about themselves.
Really, y’all? Aren’t we better than this?? Must we live in fear? Is it really necessary to give in to our darker angels and allow ourselves to be consumed by ignorance and hatred?
As if I need to answer that….
